An ability to calculate mentally lies at the heart of being successful with number work. Mental methods need to be emphasised and practised on a regular basis and these year 3 mental arithmetic pages can certainly help towards this.

These two sets of ten questions concentrate on counting on and back in single figures or whole tens. Children will often use their fingers to count on or back but it does help if they can begin to know these facts off by heart. For example counting back 7 from a number with a 2 in the units will result in an answer with 5 in the units. By the end of year 3 children should also be confident with counting on and back in whole tens from any 2-digit number.